Tag Archives: DNA testing

Hunt for the rogue pooper—company demands DNA swabs, employees sue

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About 1997, we had an insurance agent visit our house as part of a policy assessment.

The agent wanted a swab of my internal cheek.

cheek.swabHaving graduated with a molecular biology and genetics degree, I asked why.

I didn’t give a sample.

But I did write about in the Globe and Mail, which garnered a lot of negative response.

BS.

Who was the “devious defecator” leaving their “offending fecal matter” across an Atlanta-area warehouse that stored and delivered products for grocery stores?

That’s how US District Judge Amy Totenberg described the issue as she ruled in favor of two employees who were forced to give a buccal cheek swab to determine if their DNA was a match. But a match was not to be had. The two sued, claiming that the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) prohibited their 2012 tests by a forensics lab hired by their employer, Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services.

Employees Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds are expected to go to trial against their employer on June 17 in what could be the first damages trial resulting from the 2008 civil rights legislation, which generally bars employers from using individuals’ genetic information when making hiring, firing, job placement, or promotion decisions. The Office of Management and Budget has said the “potential misuse of this information raises moral and legal issues.”

Ahead of trial, Judge Totenberg set aside Atlas Logistics’ claims that the “genetic information” at issue wasn’t covered by the law. Atlas Logistics asserted that GINA excludes analyses of DNA, RNA, chromosomes, proteins, or metabolites if such analyses do not reveal an individual’s propensity for disease. The judge ruled that the “plain meaning of the statute’s text” is satisfactory for the case to go forward despite the tests at issue not revealing disease propensities.

 

Horsemeat scandal – like every other scandal — turns into blame game

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The story is dominating local news: illicit activity, selling something not as advertised, possible links with organized crime.

Footy in Australia is under intense scrutiny as government types realize, there may be a problem. Like cycling and the Tour de France.

Like horse meat substituting for other meat apparently throughout the EU.

Doug Powell, a Kansas State University food safety expert, told the Toronto Star, “It isn’t really a food safety story at this point. It is food fraud. How could
gummer.hamburgersomeone not have known? Now you’ll get a lot of finger pointing.”

What I also said was that food fraud is centuries old, and that only now is technology available to provide data to support all kinds of food hucksterism.

I also mentioned that companies marketing stuff they don’t know about are the primary villains here; government and regulatory complacency is to be expected.

Ed Bedington, editor of Meat Trades Journal, told the BBC the Findus horse meat case has brought into question the security of supply chains.

“Retailers make great play about the audits they do and the robustness of the supply chain. But as a long-term observer of the sector, it calls all that into question.”

But rest assured Canadians, home of the Walkerton E. coli-in-water outbreak, 23 deaths from listeria-in-deli meats, and the 2003 downer-cattle-slaughtered-after-hours at Aylmer Meats: rapid DNA tests of 15 hamburgers by University of Guelph types has concluded they were all beef.